266 SUMMER 



Fresh green tints, like those of the plants of dry land, are 

 not rare among seaweeds growing within reach of the light, 

 but tints of olive are commoner, while many seaweeds are red. 

 These red seaweeds resemble the rootlets of willows and 

 other riverside trees which are washed by the stream ; they 

 too wear a red dress, instead of the green which is the 

 normal colour of vegetation, or the brown or white of roots 

 which are hidden in the soil. The same tint is seen on 

 young shoots of the oak and rose and other plants in spring, 

 while the ash-shoots wear a dark green not unlike the tint of 

 many seaweeds. All these uncommon vegetable tints form 

 a protection for the plant against the light. In the oak or rose 

 shoots this shrinking is due to their tenderness, and the red 

 tints disappear when the leaves are expanded and firm. 

 Seaweeds wear a protection against the light not because it 

 is strong, for it often reaches them veiled and softened by 

 the water, but because their whole habit is that of plants 

 developed in obscurity. 



The contrasts of form and colour in a well-furnished rock- 

 pool are perhaps no greater than that in a June wood, but 

 both forms and colours are new. Oaks do not wave through 

 the air in broad trunks several hundred yards long, as they 

 would if they had the habit of this ocean vegetation ; nor in 

 the terrestrial fauna is there anything like the variety of the 

 widely diverse orders of animal life under the sea. Instead 

 of birds and mammals the sea-pools contain fishes, crus- 

 taceans and molluscs, sea-urchins and sea-worms, and primi- 

 tive forms of existence which are little more than a stomach 

 and a squirt. While branched corallines float in the crystal 

 water, among the crimson and olive tresses of the hairy sea- 

 weeds ; and as the blue sky is seen through the trees, so the 

 white sand gleams through the clearings in the shining oar- 

 weed. The brilliant colours of the sea-anemones which stud 



